Comparative analysis of rodent lens morphometrics and biomechanical properties
Date
2025-04-03
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Frontiers in Ophthalmology
Abstract
Introduction: Proper ocular lens function requires biomechanical flexibility, which is reduced during aging. As increasing lens size has been shown to correlate with lens biomechanical stiffness in aging, we tested the hypothesis that whole lens size determines gross biomechanical stiffness by comparing lenses of varying sizes from three rodent species (mice, rats, and guinea pigs).
Methods: Coverslip compression assay was performed to measure whole lens biomechanics. Whole mount staining on fixed lenses, followed by confocal microscopy, was conducted to measure lens microstructures.
Results: Among the three species, guinea pig lenses are the largest, rat lenses are smaller than guinea pig lenses, and mouse lenses are the smallest of the three. We found that rat and guinea pig lenses are stiffer than the much smaller mouse lenses. However, despite guinea pig lenses being larger than rat lenses, whole lens stiffness between guinea pigs and rats is not different. This refutes our hypothesis and indicates that lens size does not solely determine lens stiffness. We next compared lens microstructures, including nuclear size, capsule thickness, epithelial cell area, fiber cell widths, and suture organization between mice, rats, and guinea pigs. The lens nucleus is the largest in guinea pigs, followed by rats, and mice. However, the rat nucleus occupies a larger fraction of the lens. Both lens capsule thickness and fiber cell widths are the largest in guinea pigs, followed by mice and then rats. Epithelial cells are the largest in guinea pigs, and there are no differences between mice and rats. In addition, the lens suture shape appears similar across all three species.
Discussion: Overall, our data indicates that whole lens size and microstructure morphometrics do not correlate with lens stiffness, indicating that factors contributing to lens biomechanics are complex and likely multifactorial.
Description
This article was originally published in Frontiers in Ophthalmology by Frontiers Media. The version of record is available at: https://doi.org/10.3389/fopht.2025.1562583.
© 2025 Cheheltani, Islam, Malino, Abera, Aryal, Forbes, Parreno and Fowler. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
Keywords
lens stiffness, lens biomechanics, morphometrics, lens microstructures, allometry
Citation
Cheheltani S, Islam ST, Malino H, Abera K, Aryal S, Forbes K, Parreno J and Fowler VM (2025) Comparative analysis of rodent lens morphometrics and biomechanical properties. Front. Ophthalmol. 5:1562583. doi: 10.3389/fopht.2025.1562583